MOSCOW, May 10 — President Vladimir V. Putin today directed the Russian Parliament to adopt a 10-year program to stop Russia's sharply declining population, principally by offering financial incentives and subsidies to encourage Russian women to have more children.

Russia's population has been falling since before the collapse of the Soviet Union, trimmed by trends in emigration, rising death rates and declining rates of birth. Mr. Putin has raised the issue in the past, but never with such a clear set of instructions, or at such length in a prominent speech. "The situation is critical in that sphere," he said.

Abortion rates in Russia are some of the highest in the world. Conservative estimates indicate 60% of all pregnancies end in abortion. In August 2005 Russia’s abortion rates exceeded the national rate of birth for the first time.

The country’s population is estimated to be just under 143 million people. About 1.6 million women had an abortion last year, a fifth of them under the age of 18, and only about 1.5 gave birth.

Rampant abortion and environmental damage have rendered huge numbers of Russians infertile. Officials told the government newspaper that about 6 million women and 4 million men, about 7 % of Russia's population are incapable of having children. The birth rate and the life expectancy of Russians are so low that Vladimir Putin called it a “national problem” in a televised address in last April.

Combined with a significantly shorter life expectancy than most western countries – men die at about age 58 – and extremely high infant mortality rates, the demographic collapse warned of in most parts of Europe is coming to fruition much sooner in Russia.

Similar demographic problems are being experienced in Canada and other industrialized western countries but the effects on population are masked by high levels of immigration which Russia does not enjoy. Russia's population is declining by 750,000 to 800,000 a year.

The Mary Mother of God Mission Society operates a crisis pregnancy centre and post-abortion counseling service in Vladivostok along with a number of social programmes for elderly and youth. Rev Myron Effing, writing from Siberia, describes conditions of almost unimaginable suffering, where some women have had as many as 30 abortions because of a lack hope for the future.

The Russian government, however, continues to allow abortion and sterilization is legal and though it is pledging to increase healthcare funding the Russian medical community continues to offer abortions with few restrictions. The government also severely restricts working visas to those seeking to enter the country to do religious work, including pro-life work and education.

Moscow reported that up to one third of Russian abortions result in the death of the mother. The Russian government has been alarmed for some time at the impending demographic disaster created by the low birth rate. In addition, after decades of communism which endorsed abortion as a form of birth control, the physical and psychological after effects of so many millions of abortions have yet to be completely felt. Communist Soviet Union was the first nation in the world to legalize abortion in 1920. Abortion was the favourite "birth control" method during Soviet rule, and Russia still has one of the world's highest abortion rates: twice as many babies are aborted in Russia as are born. Soviet Communism encouraged abortion as a badge of women's liberation under Marxism-Leninism.

Conservative estimates put the Russian abortion rate at 60% of all pregnancies, approximately a fifth of which are on girls under 18. Vladimir Kulakov, the deputy director of the Russian Women’s Health Center says that of some 38 million women of childbearing age, about 6 million are infertile, and medical authorities consider abortions a major cause of infertility.

Now a new study shows that the death rate of women seeking abortion is also uncommonly high. Abortion is a dangerous invasive procedure whether legalized or not, but with much of Russian medical facilities working with antiquated equipment, many more women are dying from abortion complications in Russia than elsewhere.

Kulakov told Mosnews.com that of 3.5 million annual Russian pregnancies, only 1.5 million children are actually being born. Add to that the death rate of one woman in three and the number of women of child-bearing years who are capable of conceiving, Russia’s demographic disaster is promising to be worse even than the most sombre predictions. Kulakov said that as many as 15% of Russian couples are infertile and suggests a government funded programme of artificial insemination.

The deliberate and calculated abolition of family values by russia's government directives has resulted in massive rates of divorce, domestic violence, alcoholism, and skyrocketing rates of STD’s including HIV. In 1995, a report showed that almost half of all murder cases were a result of domestic violence and predicted that by the year 2000, 800,000 Russians could be infected with HIV.

Sister Julia Kubista of the Sisters in Jesus the Lord, wrote of a report on Russian television that said family values “had not been stressed in Russia for half a century and they lamented the outrageous divorce rates, sickening abortion rates the amounts of orphans, and the extent of drug use.”

As reported in 2003 - Russia's spiraling population decline means the once-populous country may face a worker shortage within three to four years. Vladimir Sokolin, head of the State Committee for Statistics, the government's statistics agency, says Russia faces a "crisis of manpower resources," and that the country's population was down 760,000 for the first 11 months of 2002 to a total of 145 million.

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AGING AND POPULATION DECLINE TO HURT INDUSTRIAL COUNTRIES IN 2010
ZURICH, Switzerland, Jan. 26, 2001 (LSN.ca) - A major study released by the Center for Strategic and International Studies declares that global labor shortages, falling savings rates, declining asset values, escalating debt and a precipitous drop in military spending are likely to be the result of the aging of the population in the world's major industrial nations. The study, conducted in collaboration with the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, European Commission, and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, said exploding pension-age populations will combine with flat or declining labor forces to create the potential for significant fiscal shortfalls in the countries by 2010.

The CSIS Global Aging Initiative notes that labor shortages likely will slow economic growth rates. After 2025, growth is expected to average substantially less than one percent annually in Japan and Western Europe; and less than two percent annually in America and Canada.